Kannauj, India — Gopal Kumar pulled aside the bulb of a flower and pointed to the place the roots of the petals had turned a little bit black inside. That is when the marigolds odor one of the best and are prepared for choosing, he mentioned. He picked a pink rose subsequent and sniffed. “You possibly can solely discover this odor in Kannauj,” he mentioned.
Kumar has been rising flowers exterior Kannauj – a sleepy city nestled on the fertile plains of the Ganges in northern India – for 50 years. His flowers are used within the making of ittars, pure perfumes produced by distilling flowers, herbs, crops or spices over a base oil, which takes on the scent of the uncooked materials.
As soon as a complicated kingdom in northern India, Kannauj is famed for its manufacturing of ittars utilizing an historic technique referred to as deg-bhakpa. This can be a gradual, laborious technique of hydrodistillation devoid of all trendy tools that has survived in a whole lot of small-scale distilleries throughout Kannauj and in surrounding cities.
Regardless of an extended heritage of perfume and scent, financial liberalisation of the late Eighties led to a interval of decline in India’s ittar trade as low-cost, alcohol-based perfumes have been launched from the West. Till the Nineties, there have been 700 distilleries in Kannauj, however their numbers dropped to 150 to 200 by the mid-2000s. Attempting to compete on value, some producers began utilizing alcohol as the bottom moderately than costlier sandalwood oil, degrading the standard and purity of the merchandise.
Submit-liberalisation, moderately than promoting on to customers, the overwhelming majority of ittars and important oils produced in India have been exported to different companies – both as an enter into perfumery and beauty industries within the West or to the tobacco trade. Rosewater is an ingredient in chewing tobacco.
However previously few years, a number of younger, predominantly feminine Indian entrepreneurs have noticed a niche out there between these indigenous artisanal abilities and India’s thriving shopper tradition, and a brand new set of homegrown manufacturers has emerged.
A brand new wave of perfume
Boond Fragrances is one such firm, established in Could 2021 through the pandemic by a sister and brother, Krati and Varun Tandon, to assist protect and lift consciousness of the perfume-making traditions of Kannuaj and to help native artisans.
“Our father was a fragrance dealer and at-home perfumer,” Krati Tandon defined at her household dwelling in Kannuaj. ”We grew up round perfumers and perfumeries in Kannauj, and you actually take in what’s taking place. However we additionally noticed through the years how some perfumeries began shutting down, and a few are fearful about their futures.”
The duo wished to make ittars accessible. “The concept was actually for us to carry it to prospects – individuals like us who, if we knew one thing like this existed, would recognize it,” Krati mentioned.
Divrina Dhingra, creator of The Fragrance Venture: Journeys Via Indian Perfume, agrees. “Ittars have a advertising drawback truly. In some ways they’re caught previously,” she mentioned. “However it is usually an consciousness drawback. I don’t know if many individuals know this trade nonetheless exists, the best way through which it exists, what it does, what is definitely accessible.”
The preliminary response to Boond, Krati mentioned, has been overwhelming with greater than 10,000 orders dispatched within the 12 months as much as October, a sizeable quantity for the younger enterprise.
Gross sales rise in winter, the Indian wedding ceremony season and the time when Christmas orders come from overseas. The corporate mentioned it expects gross sales to double within the subsequent two years however declined to share its income numbers.
“Lately, individuals have once more began realising what artificial fragrance is and what actual fragrance is,” Krati mentioned. “Significantly post-COVID, there was a change again in the direction of the actual factor.”
As per market analysis agency Technavio, the Indian perfumery trade will enhance by about 15 % compounded yearly for the subsequent 5 years. Whereas market traits are at present dominated by commerce between companies, the variety of Indian corporations promoting their very own fragrances on to customers is growing.
Indian magnificence author Aparna Gupta mentioned there’s been “a discernible shift, a renaissance if you’ll, within the home market’s perspective in the direction of these conventional fragrances”, that are predominantly marketed on Instagram, and demand for them has gained “appreciable momentum”.
She credited manufacturers like Boond which are concentrating on conventional, time-tested ittar scents for enjoying “a pivotal position” on this resurgence. “They don’t seem to be simply promoting ittars; they’re reintroducing a forgotten artwork type to a technology that’s wanting to reconnect with its heritage,” she mentioned.
Then there are different new manufacturers like Kastoor and Naso Profumi which are focusing on “youthful customers by mixing conventional components with trendy nuances” – for example, Kastoor’s Mahal with its distinctive mix of patchouli and lotus, Gupta mentioned.
A convention of scent
It’s unclear precisely how lengthy ittars and important oils – made when vapours of substances are extracted however no base oil is used – have been produced by way of hydrodistillation in India. Nonetheless, not too long ago distillation stills excavated from the cities of the Indus Valley point out a tradition of scent in some type courting again to about 3,000 BC.
Round Kannuaj, many locals attribute the invention of ittars to the Mughal queen Nur Jahan, who lived within the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE. Nonetheless, Sanskrit texts point out that the realm was already a centre of perfume earlier than Mughal instances. Historians imagine the apply was invigorated with new substances and distillation strategies additional developed by the Mughal court docket.
Manufacturing is very seasonal, and February in Kannuaj is the season of Damask rose. The warming winter solar was excessive within the sky by the point a motorcycle arrived on the distillery of Prem and Firm, a jute sack tied to its rear. Dinesh, the distiller, instantly weighed, inspected and emptied the dusky pink flowers into water inside a big copper vat referred to as a deg.
Inside minutes, the rim of the deg has been sealed with a steel lid and an hermetic layer of water and clay, and a bamboo pipe has been linked from the deg to a second, smaller vessel, the bhakpa, which sits in a concrete sink of water.
Every deg is fastened over a furnace fired with wooden or dung, and the distilled vapours go by way of the pipes, accumulating and condensing within the bhakpa. This bhakpa holds the bottom oil, which over time is imbued with the scent of the distilled materials.
Boond Fragrances use native artisans, reminiscent of Dinesh, to distil each new scents and extra conventional favourites, together with Mitti, the odor of contemporary rain, and Khus, identified for its cooling notes. Only a dab suffices with 6ml (0.2oz) promoting for $20.
The fashionable ittar
Kastoor’s founder, Esha Tiwari, desires to vary current perceptions. “Ittars are thought-about heavy,” she mentioned. “Within the earlier instances, the ittars have been so distinct. They have been utilized by kings and queens as a mode of announcement. However I don’t need to drag you to the 14th century. I’ll carry this artwork type to your twenty first century.”
Kastoor was arrange in 2021. Throughout analysis and improvement, 30-year-old Tiwari, who has a background in advertising, ran workshops to facilitate information change between ittar artisans and trendy fragrance specialists. The outcome was a set of seven “trendy ittars”, through which trusted substances are mixed in new, distinctive proportions with 8ml (0.3oz) promoting for $22 to $36. The goal market is middle-class, city customers in search of a very pure fragrance.
Progress has been speedy. Kastoor has one other assortment of ittars within the pipeline, and the variety of artisans it employs has elevated from three initially to 12 to fifteen households throughout Kannauj, Hyderabad and Uttarakhand.
Tiwari discovered the youthful generations of artisanal households have been leaving the trade because of lack of prospects. “They didn’t see the demand,” Tiwari mentioned. “That’s the place we got here in. This isn’t a one-time hike we’re giving to their enterprise. It’s a fixed change of their livelihoods.”
In keeping with Tiwari, Kastoor’s turnover is predicted to rise from $120,000 and enhance by 5 to six instances over the subsequent two to 3 years.
Made in India
Along with the home market, these new manufacturers are additionally exporting throughout the globe – to Europe, america, Japan, Australia and the Center East. The absence of alcohol makes ittars non-haram and appropriate for the non secular functions of each Hindus and Muslims.
The rising curiosity in sustainability and natural merchandise worldwide can also be bringing these producers new shoppers.
“Within the magnificence trade, there was this whole motion in the direction of pure and what’s native, and so in that sense, ittars slot in actually properly,” Dhingra mentioned.
Worldwide perfumer Yosh Han mentioned that globally, there’s an “growing want to decolonise scent” and an “curiosity in POC [people of colour] manufacturers” due to which a few of these new Indian corporations are getting curiosity from overseas.
Again in Kannauj, generations of data and expertise imply the native artisans are completely positioned to use and regulate to those new traits whereas selling Indian merchandise.
The title Kastoor comes from the phrase kasturi, which is also called musk, a scent of a deer’s navel. In keeping with folklore, the deer was enchanted by this scent and looked for it, not understanding that it was coming from itself, Tiwari defined.
“So now we have used it as a metaphor,” she smiled. “We’re nonetheless frantically trying exterior, not realising that we’re the creators of the world’s most magnanimous scents.”